I'm going to make one thing clear right from the start, I did not mean to do it. It was a total and complete accident. No part of me did it on purpose. I did not mean to do it and I was very very sorry. I really am sorry. Eternally apologetic.
It was shut down week. My job in shut down week was to clear out the laundry room, do the massive pile of washing (that never got any smaller) and count all the hotel laundry. It was a very long task and after a few days being stuck underground with no natural light and only my speakers and the sound of the washing machines and tumble dryer to keep me company I started going a bit mad. I was also getting a bit annoyed that as I was cleaning people kept dumping their crap in there. Bin bags full of crap everywhere.
I found yet another abandoned bin bag full of stuff. In it was a pair of shoes and a phone charger. I vaguely recognised the slightly scruffy pair of DCs as belonging to the head chef who had been fired a few weeks earlier. I did not want to bin them without checking so I took them up to chef to ask him. He agreed that he thought they were the head chefs and that it was ok to bin them. At this time, the KP came up to me and begged me to put a couple of his t-shirts in the wash for him. I agreed under the condition that the KP would take my bin bag to the bins for me. He thought it was a good deal and came down a few minutes later with three t-shirts and I took them to the laundry room.
I descended back into the Pit of Hell that was the laundry room and blasted out Frank Turner, Counting Crows and David Bowie and sang along at the top of my voice continuing with my delicate laundry classification system and cleaning. The washing machine finished and I put in a new load, slightly worried that I couldn't find the t-shirts I had agreed to wash. But I put that to the back of my mind as I knew I would find them for the next lot of washing that went in.
I decided I needed a break and some natural light so went up to the kitchen to have a cup of tea and try and steal some food. And as usual I stopped for a chat.
'Err have you found a pair of shoes in the laundry room? A pair of DCs?'
My heart stopped instantly.
I turned and saw LiF looking at me pointedly
Ohhh Shit
A hundred excuses and denials suddenly ran through my head as I peered round him to see with horror that the rubbish had been taken a long time ago.
Ididn'tknowtheywereyoursIthoughttheyweretheheadchefsIputtheminthebinWHYWERETHEYINABINBAG'I said all at once in a mumbled blur. Chef was looking at me and smiling and LiF was looking at me in absolute horror,
'You're joking right?'
'Why were they in a bin bag in my laundry room?'
I have a bad habit of giggling when I'm nervous and I don't think this helped the currently situation as I did not come across as sorry as I actually was. It was also not helped by the fact I could see Chef laughing behind him and that was making me worst.
'Chef said they belonged to the head chef' ('don't blame this on me' chef shouted still smirking 'you bloody binned them')
'But they didn't they were mine', he was beginning to look a mixture of very sad and very angry.
This went on for some time, I even offered to buy him some more. I eventually went back to the laundry room to see if by chance there was another bin bag with shoes in there. I did not hold out much hope but by that point I was willing to try absolutely anything. Five minutes later and I knew it was hopeless, suddenly H1 burst in to say that LiF and chef had gone down to the bins to get the shoes back. I hurtled out the door and down towards the bins without even stopping for a coat.
Let me tell you something about French bins. They are huge and go twelve feet underground. They have a big lid and a twelve foot long sack cloth giant bin bag. The bins nearest to us were just down the road. There were three of them for general waste and several for recycling. They were also shared with several other people and a hotel much posher than ours. When I got there they were both standing peering into one of them and were rather shocked to see me running towards them. Hope flickered in LiF's eyes before quickly dying away again as I shock my head.
'I am going to have to get in' LiF said after we had all stood staring into the bin for about two minutes.
'No you can't, its not safe' I said, ever the voice of health and safety. Then the guilt hit me again and I offered to get in instead. 'But wait', I said, 'If I get in there is no way you two dickheads will help we out, you will just leave me inside the bin and run off'.
'No I wouldn't let you get in' LiF replied rather kindly considering the fact that we were only there because I had thrown his shoes away and he promptly climbed into the bin.
Now this bin was quite full, it wasn't much of a drop and he started going through the bags. After a few minutes punctuated by his cries of 'ugh' and 'arg that's gross' and me and chef collapsing with laughter we decided it would be easier if he passed the bin bags up and we looked through them. I could tell which bin bags were not ours because the posh hotel had a much higher standard of bin bag than we did. The chefs could tell which were ours because they knew what food they had cooked. After about fifteen minutes a car pulled up and three people got out,
'Is there someone in that bin?' they asked in surprise,
'Err, yes, I actually accidentally threw away his shoes and now we are looking for them' I said as the two woman started to laugh.
'Good luck' they waved as they drove past.
Then LiF shouted 'there's loads of t-shirts in this bag'. I looked in and wondered why I recognised them, 'Oh crap they are the KPs, he gave them to me to wash, I wondered where they went'.
Both boys looked at me in shock
'What?' LiF said very slowly 'you binned his stuff too?'
I realised just how bad that looked. Both incidents were a complete mistake, a very careless one I admit, but a mistake. I was hoping that we could keep this second little mistake quiet but chef has never kept anything quiet in his whole entire life.
The boys got bored of that bin and moved to the next one which was ever so slightly less full that the last one. At one point I looked into the bin and LiF had his hand waving over a hotel sanitary bag.
'Argh DO NOT TOUCH THAT' I shouted into the hole. He jumped back and inquired what it was and if it had anything to do with periods.
'Yes' I answered now severely grossed out and desperate for a shower and clean clothes. I could feel the bin juice making its way through my clothes and on to my skin.
At this precise moment the bin men turned up
'Oh Shit' I said
'Oh Shit' chef said
'What is it' came the voice from inside the bin.
The French bin men looked very angry as they pulled up in their truck. There was by this point, a nice big pile of rummaged through bin bags by the side of the road. In very garbled French I just about explained that we had lost a pair of shoes and these very angry bin men suddenly started laughing. And they didn't stop laughing. They even helped look through a few bin bags. One found an old sandal and threw it down at LiF who was still in the bin, then started laughing a lot more. There was, in fact, a surprisingly large number of shoes in the bins, just not any DC trainers.
The bin men soon got bored and got hold of LiF by his arms and pulled him out before moving on to their jobs and taking away the cardboard recycling.
There was now only one bin we hadn't looked through. And it only had a few bin bags it it. It was, we estimated, about a nine foot drop.
'No' I said, with my health and safety head on once again.
'It will be fine' both of the boys said in unison. This did not make me feel any better.
'He can get in and then we can use the bin bags from the other bin so he can climb out' Chef said rather cleverly.
LiF lowered himself into the bin. There was a lot of swearing. And there was no DC trainers in the bin. It was however quite fun firing bin bags back into the bin towards LiF's head. Chef and I made it into a bit of a game. We found it hilarious, LiF did not. In fact chef and I had found the whole experience really bloody funny. The funniest was when LiF popped his head out of the bin so he could have a smoke. A little smoking head stuck out from the bin. His need for a smoke was understandable, by that point I felt like I needed a smoke.
In one final last ditch attempted I suggested we went back to the first bin as we hadn't looked through all the bags and try again.
And within minutes we had found them. There they were, still in their bin bag at the bottom of the bin. I was beyond shocked that we had actually found them. We had been searching through the bins for well over an hour by this point. We were dirty, tired, smelly and covered in a variety of unknown liquids. And I was completely freezing as I had gone down in just my t-shirt and it was beginning to snow. I did not feel it was the right time to mention my discomfort.
Now some people suggested I had thrown away his shoes on purpose because I was mad at him after our brief encounter. This was not the case at all, I was far from mad at him. Several others laughed and said he deserved it. I was also not one of these people. The irony of the whole situation was not lost on me though and his head sticking out of the bin was one of the funniest things I have ever seen.
The next day I was completely horrified to see him still wearing the coat he had been in the bin in. As I was controlling everything that went in and out of the washing machine I said 'Please just give me the coat, I will wash it'
'I'm not fucking giving you anything, it will go in the bin' was my sharp (and I feel, unfair) reply
'Please, I promise it wont, I just can't bare to see you in a coat covered in bin juice, you are in a kitchen for god's sake'
I then realised what I was doing. I was begging to be allowed to do a man's washing. I was letting down woman kind everywhere, what would the Suffragettes say? What would Germaine Greer say???????
However
That coat really did need washing.
And I had banned everyone from the hotel from using the washing machine.
I was stuck in the middle of two very conflicting ideas.
While I was having my internal debate with myself and an imaginary Germaine Greer, LiF said 'If you wash the jacket, can you put some other things of mine in too?'
'Yes' I said, banishing Germaine from my head, 'Go get them now'.
Five minutes later he came in with a pile of clothes, having his own internal battle over whether his need for clean pants out weight his total distrust of me.
I made him put the clothes into the washing machine himself as there was no way I was going anywhere near his dirty pants.
'I will try not to shrink them' I said as I turned the machine on. He looked at me with complete fear in his eyes.
'That was a joke' I said. He did not laugh.
As they came out of the washing machine I read all the care labels of his clothes and then tumble dried them. I then folded them nicely.
'I am sorry Germaine, I am sorry, I promise I will not make a habit of washing the clothes of men I have seen naked, I will atone for my sins, I will' I repeted in my head while folding up his clean, dry underpants
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